Google won’t release minority hiring statistics, claiming trade secret

Peninsula Press
By Priyanka Sharma 17 Apr 2011

The universal search engine may not be as transparent as it claims.
Google’s mission statement is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” yet when asked to disclose data about its internal hiring process, the company flatly refused.
Google has claimed that its hiring procedures are a trade secret, but other Silicon Valley heavy hitters like Intel, Cisco, and eBay have released their data.
“All we are asking is for Google to show us the numbers,” said Len Canty, chairman of the Black Economic Council. He was among several minority leaders who protested outside Google’s Mountain View headquarters on Feb. 10, rallying for Google to be more transparent about the minorities it hires.
“Cisco’s numbers are not so impressive, but they have been transparent,” Canty noted.

Full Story: http://www.penipress.com/2011/04/17/google-wont-release-minority-hiring-statistics-claiming-trade-secret/

Five Silicon Valley companies fought release of employment data, and won

mercurynews.com
By Mike Swift
mswift@mercurynews.com
Posted: 02/14/2010 04:00:00 PM PST
Updated: 02/14/2010 08:47:17 PM PST

Google, the company that wants to make the world's information accessible, says the race and gender of its work force is a trade secret that cannot be released.
So do Apple, Yahoo, Oracle and Applied Materials. These five companies waged an 18-month Freedom of Information battle with the Mercury News, convincing federal regulators who collect the data that its release would cause "commercial harm" by potentially revealing the companies' business strategy to competitors. A sixth company, Hewlett-Packard, fought the release and lost.
But many of their industry peers see the issue differently. The Mercury News initially set out to obtain race and gender data on the valley's 15 largest companies, and nine — including Intel, Cisco Systems, eBay, AMD, Sanmina and Sun Microsystems — agreed to allow the U.S. Department of Labor to provide it....

The Labor Department data ultimately obtained by the Mercury News shows that while the collective work force of 10 of the valley's largest companies grew by 16 percent from 1999 to 2005, an already small population of black workers dropped by 16 percent, while the number of Hispanic workers declined by 11 percent. By 2005, only about 2,200 of the 30,000 Silicon Valley-based workers at those 10 companies were black or Hispanic.


Full Story: http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_14382477?source=most_emailed